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36
home from the ship hospitals or camp. Under the
arrangements matured by the Managers, the treatment
of a small-pox patient may be said to commence at
the moment of removal, for he is taken charge of at the
bedside by a skilled nurse, who attends upon him in the
ambulance and in the steamer. Hitherto, the service so
carefully organized, has worked well, and it must be allowed
to be a great improvement on that which, in the course of a
short time, it will have entirely superseded. Large as are the
expenses being, or to be, incurred, it will probably be felt that
the Managers have exercised a sound discretion in making
provision for all contingencies, quietly and systematically,
while as yet there was no serious epidemic: they have been
found prepared and so panic has been avoided now that the
emergency has arisen.
It is almost superfluous to add, perhaps, that the
Managers have been hampered, more or less, at every stage
of their proceedings, through local opposition, based generally
on fears that hospitals, ambulance-stations and wharves
alike, must needs depreciate the value of adjacent property
and injuriously affect the health of the inhabitants. Subject
to proper precautions being adopted I do not think the
latter danger is likely to arise, and the first named will
probably turn out to be ill-founded.
From what has already been stated it will appear, that
when the arrangements in progress, or contemplated, shall
have been completed, the Managers will have provided a
sufficiency of hospital accommodation for infectious diseases
for all classes of the population. It is to be remembered,
moreover, that by the Diseases Prevention (Metropolis) Act,
1883, the relief to be afforded in the Managers' Hospitals
will not pauperise the recipients of it, for I hold it impossible
that the provisions of section 7 should not be made permanent.
It only remains, therefore, to contrive arrangements
for facilitating the admittance of patients without the
formalities which now frequently interpose delay when delay